Justin Trudeau has appointed 93 so-called independent senators over the course of his premiership. Of that, 85 still sit in the Senate. Of those 85, they range in ideological orientation from center-left to radical-left. They have shown some moderate independence from Liberal Party discipline, but most have not.
00:00:58.160Importantly, every single one of them ranges in ideological orientation from center-left to radical-left.
00:01:04.220A few of them have shown some moderate independence from Liberal Party discipline, but most have not.
00:01:10.260That is 85 of 105 seats directly appointed by Justin Trudeau,
00:01:15.920in addition to several more appointed by Liberal Prime Ministers predating Stephen Harper.
00:01:20.700To finally outnumber the Trudeau Senators,
00:01:23.000the Conservatives would need to win every single election for many, many years to come.
00:01:28.840Meanwhile, the cost to Canada would be parliamentary obstruction by unelected appointees,
00:01:33.660many hundreds of billions in wasted tax dollars, and untold more in missed economic opportunities.
00:01:40.280Much cheaper and more democratic would be to simply bribe them all to retire.
00:01:44.880Give them however much money it will take to ease the current crop of senators
00:01:49.160into a very wealthy, taxpayer-funded sunset.
00:01:53.000There are a few ways that this could be done, but here's my proposal to buy them off.
00:01:58.920To start, Senators can earn up to 75% of their salary in pensionable earnings, normally requiring roughly 25 years of service.
00:02:08.380Some Senators will be close to this amount, but most will still be a ways off.
00:02:12.540Some will hit the mandatory retirement age of 75 before they max out their pension.
00:02:18.680Forget all that actuarial mumbo-jumbo.
00:02:21.900Just give them their full pension of 75% of their salary immediately if they retire right now.
00:02:27.860For a relatively young senator of 50 years, that would be worth $6.2 million.
00:02:33.400But for younger senators earning an average salary of $178,000 per year,
00:02:40.440a mere 75% of that in pension earnings might not be shiny enough.
00:02:46.540That's why in addition to their pensions, they should also continue to be paid their full salary from the date of their retirement until their death.
00:02:55.000For a 70-year-old senator already nearing mandatory retirement, that would be worth $2.7 million if they lived until the age of 85.
00:03:03.840For a younger senator of 50 years, that'd be worth about $6.2 million.
00:03:08.660dollars. But wait, there's more! To really push them over the edge and put real cold hard Canadian0.90
00:03:16.100cash in their hands right away, we should put something really shiny in the window that they
00:03:21.740could have right now. Perhaps a million dollar unsigning bonus, maybe even two million, whatever
00:03:28.520it takes. We could even pay them in American dollars if that'll help. It would be more than
00:03:34.120worth it to taxpayers and to the democratic system. The average senator is right now is 67
00:03:40.840years old, and if they live to 85, we have to pay them their salary and full pension for 18 years.
00:03:48.080So that's a rough total cost to the taxpayer of $312,000 per year per senator, or $32 million
00:03:58.460per year if the entire Senate takes the bribe. That works out to a total of $589 million if
00:04:05.620every senator serving right now lives to the age of 85. Together with the $1 million one-time
00:04:12.640unsigning bonus, the total cost of the Canadian taxpayer will be a grand total of $600 million.
00:04:19.600Hell, I don't care how we do it. As expensive as it would be, the cost would be at least partially
00:04:26.940defrayed by the pension, benefits, and salary that we already have to pay them already if we
00:04:32.520continue with business as usual. Now some of you poor working stiffs may blush at such an extravagant
00:04:38.720severance package. Some of you may even think that I'm being facetious. I'm not. If Canada
00:04:44.780elects a conservative government in a month or so, it will be endlessly obstructed for many years to
00:04:49.560come by the Trudeau senators. A conservative government will be forced to water down their
00:04:54.440program until it is acceptable to the Liberal Senate. That will cost taxpayers many, many times
00:05:01.080more than the $600 million it would take to bribe them all into voluntary retirement. As wretched
00:05:07.380as the medicine may taste going down, Canadian taxpayers and the citizenry would be much better
00:05:13.000for it. All right, well, I'm going to continue past that rant there and talk to a few senators
00:05:21.160about this. Later on, I'm going to talk to Conservative Senator Scott Tannis. He is one
00:05:26.840of the very few, perhaps he might be the only one left, elected, democratically elected senators
00:05:32.680currently serving, of course, from Alberta. Alberta is the only place in Canada that holds
00:05:37.780democratic elections for the Senate. So first up, we have Alberta Senator Paula Simons. She was0.70
00:05:47.080appointed by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau several years ago. So I'm pleased to bring her
00:05:53.400into the show. She might be, I think it's, she'll call me on it if it's not fair, but I think it's
00:05:59.200fair to say she's on the more progressive side of things. But she is one of the few who has,
00:06:04.940from time to time, shown a bit more independence than many other members of the Senate. So welcome,
00:06:11.020Senator Simons. Thank you for joining us. Good to see you, Derek. I have to say, I did
00:06:16.220have the chance to listen to your little opening talk. And it's funny. I mean,
00:06:20.720I understand why people might feel that way. But there are two things I need to say off the top.
00:06:27.200Senators, first of all, especially this current crop of senators, tend to be all type A overachieving
00:06:33.300workaholics. The last thing any of us wants to do is retire early with a golden diamond studded
00:06:43.180parachute the other thing is senators generally come in two flavors there are senators who have
00:06:47.660been hugely successful in their professional financial lives and they don't they don't need
00:06:54.060they don't need extra money i think for some of them our senate salary is kind of like an honorarium
00:06:58.620and then you get senators like me um who've spent our lives earning not very much money whether
00:07:03.340we're working in the not-for-profit sector or in my case as a journalist um and we do the work for
00:07:09.580free because we're not motivated by money. So I don't think buying us off would work. It also
00:07:15.180won't work constitutionally. In 2014, Stephen Harper, when he was prime minister, asked the
00:07:22.440Supreme Court specifically in a reference case what it would take to abolish the Senate. And the
00:07:28.020answer for the Supreme Court was clear. To abolish the Senate would require the unanimous consent of
00:07:34.700all 10 provinces, so all the provincial legislatures would have to vote in favor. The House
00:07:40.000of Commons would have to vote in favor, and the Senate would have to vote in favor. So even if you
00:07:44.940gave me a zillion million dollars, and even if I wanted a zillion million dollars, you can't just
00:07:50.960put us all out to pasture. And what would I do with my time? I would have to go back to being
00:07:58.140a reporter like you um it would uh it i mean it's a it's a it's a fun thought experiment and i will
00:08:05.480tell you that people all across the political spectrum not just western standard audiences
00:08:09.300but you know the democrats have believed for generations in the abolition of the senate
00:08:14.220it's just that it's not it's it's much more easily said than done uh well i'm not actually
00:08:20.060proposing the abolition of a senate uh i i think a federation a genuine federation needs an upper
00:08:26.260House, although I think the structure of it needs to be radically overhauled, beginning with the
00:08:32.200seat count. In Alberta, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, has six senators, which is barely more than
00:08:36.620half of New Brunswick, which has a tiny, tiny fraction of the population of Alberta.
00:08:41.960I mean, this is a problem. I mean, British Columbia has six senators and Nova Scotia has 10.
00:08:48.120Yeah. I mean, I'm enough of an Alberta girl to agree with you absolutely that British Columbia
00:08:55.160and Alberta in particular don't have a fair representation in the Senate, which is the
00:09:00.340problem if you try to make it equal, if you try to make it effective and elected without making it
00:09:05.620equal, it would actually be to the detriment of Western Canada. I strongly agree with you on that
00:09:12.620point. So I'm actually not, perhaps I didn't say it clearly in my opening rant there. I'm not
00:09:18.880proposing to abolish the Senate. I'm proposing to clear out voluntarily. Oh, you just want to
00:09:24.040call us okay yeah i yeah call um voluntarily um i i don't expect every single one would take it
00:09:31.320but i would imagine a younger senator uh i mean that's that puts a whole new career path in front
00:09:37.560of them with a lot of money to work with i you know we actually we actually quite like the job
00:09:42.760because because we take the job seriously we don't like the job because of the salary
00:09:47.480we like the job because we take seriously our responsibility to hold every single piece of
00:09:53.640of government legislation up to nonpartisan scrutiny. And I think it's really important
00:09:58.240to say that of the current crop of senators, out of 105, only 12 belong to a partisan party.
00:10:05.120You had mentioned earlier that you'd be speaking to my friend and colleague, Scott Tannis.
00:10:09.140You called him a conservative senator. That's not true. Scott crossed the floor
00:10:14.100to form his own independent Senate group, the Canadian Senators Group, which is a small C
00:10:21.500conservative, maybe, you know, slightly red-tinged Tory group. But they are not part of the
00:10:28.940conservative caucus. They are not whipped by the conservative leader. And Scott takes his
00:10:33.300independence with tremendous pride. And I would say he's done as much as anyone to ensure the
00:10:39.480reform of an independent Senate full of senators who do not walk a party line.
00:10:45.680Okay, you are correct that the vast majority of senators no longer belong to a capital L
00:10:50.940liberal caucus or a or a capital conservative caucus that's also extremely small but i i think
00:11:00.320you probably wouldn't disagree with me that justin uh the prime ministers tend to appoint
00:11:06.100senators that uh even if they're on paper independent and even if they act uh somewhat
00:11:12.460independently i you've questioned me before a senate committee i i know you take your job
00:11:15.860seriously. And you're not towing a partisan line, but I think you would probably agree. It's fair
00:11:21.320to say you're on the progressive side of things. And Justin Trudeau's appointments have been
00:11:25.080people who have some ideological affinity on the progressive side. Stephen Harper's appointments
00:11:31.220outside of Alberta have tended to be, for the most part, ideologically conservative. In Alberta,
00:11:36.760he's gone from the list of recommended appointees from the consultative elections that Alberta
00:11:43.420holds. So yes, they're not like me. I'm not a partisan conservative, but ideologically,
00:11:50.060philosophically, I'm pretty small C conservative. And I think it's fair to say that the current
00:11:54.640Senate is very overwhelmingly on the progressive side of things.
00:11:59.680Yeah. I mean, so the two things I want to say about that. Prime Minister Trudeau was
00:12:03.940prime minister for almost 10 years. And as you've said, when any prime minister is in power for that
00:12:09.380long, he or she tends to appoint people with whom they have some political affinity. And I think it
00:12:16.760is fair to say that Prime Minister Trudeau appointed quite a few conservatives, but the
00:12:22.220conservatives he appointed were progressive conservatives. They're not even recognizably
00:12:28.960conservative. I might be on the very conservative side, but they're not even vaguely recognizably
00:12:35.000conservative to most conservatives today. I think senators like David Richards and Rob Black
00:12:40.600and Charles Adler might disagree with that. I don't know. Okay, Charles Adler was a conservative
00:12:46.520at some point, but he had some Damascus moment. I don't think anyone in the country would consider0.96
00:12:52.400Charles Adler to be a conservative today. And not just in the partisan sense. I have all sorts of
00:12:57.020issues with and had my fights with conservative politicians, but I was still always a small C
00:13:03.480conservative. Charles Adler, no, no, no one would actually consider Charles Adler to be a
00:13:07.820conservative today, at least among self-identified conservatives. Well, if you look at the
00:13:11.620appointees from Alberta, Prime Minister Trudeau appointed Patty Labekin-Benson and Karen Sorensen,
00:13:19.760both of whom were card-carrying Alberta progressive conservatives. Yeah, we both know that that party
00:13:25.280back in its heyday included people clearly on the left as well, like Alison Redford's,
00:13:30.060all of that. I don't want to quibble on the details of every single person, but
00:13:34.200he's not been appointing actual conservatives. He's not been appointing people as conservative
00:13:38.900as you. Well, no one would appoint someone as conservative as me, to be fair.
00:13:43.740Pierre Polyev would not appoint someone as conservative as me.
00:13:46.400So, I mean, the real question is, how can you make the Senate useful? And I think you ask a
00:13:51.100fair question in your introduction, which is to say, if Pierre Polyev wins the election, and I
00:13:56.080think on the day I'm talking to you, it's about a 50-50. It's certainly not the lock it appeared
00:14:02.400to be in December. I mean, it's much more up in the air. But I think there's still an even chance
00:14:07.400that Pierre Polyev could form the next government. And then the real legitimate question will be for
00:14:11.980the Senate, all right, most of you were appointed by Justin Trudeau. How do you handle it if
00:14:18.180legislation comes before you with which you are ideologically opposed? And there's an interesting
00:14:24.320historical precedent for this. It's called the Salisbury Convention. It's what sort of binds
00:14:29.900the British House of Lords, not to defeat legislation that comes from labor governments.
00:14:35.280And in Canada, we have largely adopted the premise of the Salisbury Convention, which is
00:14:39.820that if a peer poly of government is formed, and they put legislation before the Senate,
00:14:46.060we will, for the large part, have to hold our nose and pass it. We might amend it. We might
00:14:52.660push back. We might make speeches opposing things. But at the end of the day, we do not have the
00:14:58.280moral or political or democratic authority to block legislation on which a conservative prime
00:15:05.960minister, whether it's Pierre Polyev or perhaps a conservative prime minister in the future,
00:15:10.240has campaigned. So the Salisbury Convention says if you put something in your platform
00:15:14.660And you get a mandate to enact that platform. The unelected Senate cannot block you just because we don't like it. The question that is more complicated comes if the legislation is unconstitutional or violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:15:37.140That's where I wanted to go next. One of your colleagues, I can't remember the name off the top of my head, says that the Senate should block any legislation that would include the Notwithstanding Clause. Now, whatever anyone thinks of the Notwithstanding Clause, it is a part of the Constitution. It is by definition a constitutional tool.
00:15:56.400um that would seem to fly in the face of the salisbury convention and because the salisbury
00:16:02.300convention is a convention and conventions are a very important part of our westminster system
00:16:07.980but the weak part of conventions especially when we have a mixed written and unwritten
00:16:12.220uh system like in canada is the unwritten parts the convention parts they tend to get
00:16:19.060bent when it's convenient by by people on both sides of the aisle both sides are guilty of sin
00:16:25.460of that. How confident are you that the Salisbury Convention would remain a solid convention,
00:16:34.620a part of our effective constitution in this case, especially if, say, Pierre Paglia brought
00:16:39.560forward a piece of legislation that invoked the notwithstanding clause on, say, I don't know,
00:16:44.700mandatory minimum sentences for something in the criminal code? Yeah, preemptively, which has never
00:16:50.760been done before. So this is where Peter Harder and I have had some interesting discussions.
00:16:54.700I mean, Senator Harder is a huge proponent of the Salisbury Convention. He's not a fan of the
00:17:00.640notwithstanding clause. I come from Alberta, and because I am 60 years old, in case you were
00:17:07.420wondering. I wasn't asking, ma'am. No, but you were talking about a young senator at 50 and an
00:17:12.480old senator at 70, and I'm right in the middle. But I remember Peter Lougheed, and I remember the
00:17:18.080genesis of the notwithstanding clause. And so I spoke to Peter Harder's motion in the Senate,
00:17:22.460And I said, look, I don't think we should adopt a motion that says we will absolutely vote to defeat any piece of legislation that preemptively invokes the notwithstanding clause.
00:17:32.920Because I can imagine a scenario in which a government, conservative or liberal, might be will within its sort of practical rights to invoke the notwithstanding clause, especially if a Supreme Court decision is sort of, you know, way out of bounds.
00:17:49.620But I think there would be some circumstances in which something was so egregious that, you know, it's one of those moments, Derek, where you and I have these funny moments where we agree because we're both libertarians at heart.
00:18:04.480You know, I think you and I could both imagine something that a government of whatever stripe could invoke that you and I might agree the Senate should defeat that.
00:18:16.160So I think that you keep your options open and your powder dry. I think that's the Canadian way.
00:18:24.180So I think there's some pretty big exceptions to the Salisbury Convention. The most notable was, I think, in the very early 1990s, when the Senate, by a one vote margin, essentially on a tie, I think may have been broken by the Speaker, on replacing Canada's abortion legislation.
00:18:45.180legislation. In 1991. And people like to say that conservative Senator Pat Carney
00:18:50.500was the deciding vote. I mean, technically, that's not true. But I think because she was a
00:18:56.640recently appointed conservative senator appointed by the Mulroney government, having been a Mulroney
00:18:59.980cabinet minister, the fact that she voted to maintain freedom of choice for Canadian women
00:19:06.280and the freedom for Canadian women to control their own bodies is an excellent example of a
00:19:11.380libertarian use of the senate to defend our civil rights and freedoms okay but you know abortion is0.92
00:19:17.200largely off the political menu today but in 1991 it was hotly debated it had uh been the existing
00:19:24.140legislation had been struck down by the supreme court and i don't want to make this a topic about
00:19:27.860abortion this is about the salisbury convention and the application the canadian center but i
00:19:32.140would say but it was not a matter that was decisively considered this is a fundamental
00:19:36.980human rights a large block of canadians believe that but at a very large block also uh believe
00:19:43.880that was a human right to protect unborn it was my point is it was a matter of dispute it was not
00:19:48.540a matter of broad public consensus at that time that's fair and and the senate intervened on a
00:19:53.900highly contentious political issue uh many of the votes against it actually were some of the hard
00:19:59.560pro-life uh senators who thought the the replacement legislation was was too pro-choice
00:20:05.100on the other side um but the issue of it aside this was not an issue where we had broad-based
00:20:11.300social consensus at the time the senate made a very clear decision on on ideological and
00:20:17.100partisan matter that was not clearly about uh broadly shared values around rights at that time
00:20:23.560what's what i think is fascinating is if you look at the voting records there were conservatives who
00:20:27.260voted in support of abortion and there were liberals i mean devout catholic liberals who
00:20:32.320voted against it. And I think this is a really interesting test case because this is long before
00:20:37.220Justin Trudeau amends the Senate to appoint independents, right? So this is back when the
00:20:44.140Senate was a partisan body, liberals and conservatives, and senators still voted their
00:20:48.700conscience and didn't necessarily vote the party line. So, I mean, that has happened exactly once
00:20:54.100in, you know, in our lifetimes. Were you alive in 91? I was.
00:20:59.940I'm not. I'd like to have not been. I'd like to be younger, but no, I was around.
00:21:05.540But I think it's the exception that proves the rule. I think the fact that it has happened
00:21:10.380exactly once shows that the Senate acts with restraint and acts with courageous prudence,
00:21:16.480which is kind of one of our mottos, to only do these things in very rare instances.
00:21:24.940So, I think if people are expecting a huge constitutional crisis in the wake of a potential
00:21:29.820poly-ev election, I think they're going to be disappointed by how boring things actually turn
00:21:34.660out to be. All that said, who knows what's going to happen because, you know, Canadian-American1.00
00:21:40.280relations being what they are. I was in Ottawa earlier this week, and I heard people talking
00:21:47.420about the possibility of a national unity government. And I said, in that case, the Senate
00:21:53.780will have to be at its most stringent. Because if we had a national unity government, then you get
00:22:02.120a tendency to groupthink and everybody says, oh, we have to do this. It's in that case that the
00:22:07.720senate will have to be absolutely on its guard to protect civil liberties yeah uh i there's uh
00:22:15.300there's a saying uh uh the united states is uh bipartisanship is when both parties gang up and
00:22:20.100screw the people uh so you have to be very careful when the parties are actually acting together it's
00:22:24.380it's often when the parties are acting together we like them to act together sometimes but that's
00:22:28.200actually when we have to be most on guard against uh government overreach is when there's broad
00:22:31.960consensus among the major parties well exactly and i think you know i suspect that some of your
00:22:37.600Western Standard viewers and readers are fans of Donald Trump, and I suspect others of them are
00:22:42.000not, or if they were in the past, they're not so enthused now. And we can see what happens in the
00:22:47.380United States when the Senate fails to do its job. And whatever you think about Donald Trump's
00:22:53.320program, I think there are a lot of principled conservatives who are waiting for Republican
00:22:57.600senators to say, okay, we agreed on this and this and this, but that is a bridge too far.
00:23:02.460And what I hope is that whoever becomes the next prime minister, whether Mark Carney wins or Pierre Polyev wins, I am committed to holding that government to account. I am committed to taking every single piece of legislation apart, piece by piece, to ensure that we get the best governance.
00:23:21.140And you know, Derek, because you've seen me in action in Senate committees, I don't pull my punches.
00:23:25.800And I think I have many Senate colleagues, no matter who wins, who will understand that their job is to protect the Charter and the Constitution and the democracy of Canada.
00:23:36.460Well, we're on very different sides of things, but I know you are a honey badger of a senator and take your jobs very, very seriously.
00:23:43.780I think if I'm in Alberta, I should be a Wolverine.
00:23:46.360okay senator wolverine uh that's that's apt on a few levels there i think that works um
00:23:53.100and if you could arrange for hugh jackman to be on with me the next time that would be even better
00:23:57.420now i'm getting your angle now i see what you're coming at okay uh shameless but uh fair enough
00:24:03.720fair enough uh all right well i i know you take your job seriously uh i know you you would just
00:24:10.320want to do it period but i'm gonna be there with a 600 million dollar bag when this election's
00:24:16.220over and we'll see okay well thank you you know when i turn 75 and retire if you'd like to meet
00:24:21.660with 600 million dollars you know in in back of the railway station i'd be cool with that too
00:24:26.860no don't say that senator paula simons um does does her job does her job because she loves it
00:24:33.860you know i mean this you and i have talked about this i i was a journalist we got we've already
00:24:37.880got you on the record on the record no i was a journalist for 30 years we all know i would work
00:24:42.340for peanuts. You know what? Yeah. In this business, I do believe you must not be in it for
00:24:50.300the money. That's fair enough. Well, Senator, I really appreciate you being generous with your
00:24:56.380time and your insights today. Thank you very much for joining us. Take care, Derek. All right. I'm
00:25:01.680now going to be joined by Senator Tannis. I believe he is. He'll correct me if I'm wrong. I think he's
00:25:07.000part of the independent senators group. He was elected as a progressive conservative. He has
00:25:13.240the distinction of, let's bring him in now, he has the distinction of being the only elected member
00:25:18.480of the Canadian Senate right now. There has been a tradition going back, I think, to Stan Waters
00:25:24.520when he was elected under the Reform Party banner circa 1991-ish, and the tradition started that
00:25:32.800at least conservative prime ministers would respect the Alberta consultative Senate elections
00:25:38.620and then appoint the winner of those elections. And that's continued on through conservative
00:25:42.880prime ministers with Alberta, at least. And so Scott Tannis was elected in 2012. In Alberta,
00:25:51.180we use provincial, at least sometimes we use provincial party banners to run under. He was
00:25:56.020elected under the progressive conservative banner in 2012, and then appointed by Prime
00:26:01.360Minister Stephen Harper, to the Senate in 2013 with retirements.
00:26:05.340That makes him now the lonely last democratically elected senator in Alberta.
00:26:10.840All senators since then, including in Alberta where we've had elections since, have been
00:26:16.460ignored by Justin Trudeau, and he's just appointed his own people.
00:26:23.260So, Senator Tannis, thank you very much for taking time to join us today.
00:26:28.620All right. Well, you know, before we get into my kind of cockamamie, diamond-encrusted severance package proposal for the Senate, I mean, we want to get your thoughts on, you know, how much of a challenge could the Senate be, both maybe in probability and even in more extreme cases,
00:26:57.220Could the Senate be if in roughly a month's time, Canadians were to elect a conservative government in the House of Commons, even with a large majority, the Senate is currently now overwhelmingly liberal appointed, if not liberal in partisan name, at least liberal appointed, not ideologically left.
00:27:17.260How obstructionist could the Senate be if there happens to be a change in governing party?
00:27:22.780Well, I think they could be quite obstructionist if they wanted to be.
00:27:33.240This is something that, especially over the last six months, has been on every senator's mind.
00:27:42.060Because the wide assumption was that the conservatives would form a large majority.
00:27:49.140And people had to think about how they were going to behave in that.
00:27:52.320and groups such as mine. And I actually, you mentioned Independent Senators Group, which is
00:27:57.440the largest group in the Senate. That's not my group. I, together with former Senator Doug Black
00:28:04.240and others, started the Canadian Senators Group. We're the second largest. We have 18 members.
00:28:13.040And we've been functioning together as a group since 2019. The point is that we've all talked
00:28:20.080about it, the different groups. We've talked about it as leaders, including the current
00:28:25.460leader of the opposition and Don Plett from the Conservative Party, as well as the leader
00:28:33.180of the independent senators group and so on. I'm nervous about how this will play out,
00:28:41.460But I think that we will get into a rhythm with it that will be acceptable to the, you know, if it were a conservative government, even one with a large majority and a sense of urgency to get things done, I think the Senate will respond appropriately.
00:29:06.320I mean, it might take a little longer than, you know, than a similar bill would have taken, say, with, you know, with liberal government.
00:29:17.960And I think most senators will use the, you know, will respect the principle of, you know, that our job is, again, I'm the only elected, but everybody else is appointed.
00:29:32.460And everybody's pretty sensitive about that, that a government with a strong majority, a fresh majority, a fresh mandate and an agenda, that that needs to be respected and that our job in those cases is likely simply to hear out, hold the hearings, have some debates on the record.
00:29:55.840If we see something that we think is helpful to what the government's trying to accomplish, or if we hear something in testimony that we think deserves consideration of an amendment, we put those amendments forward, we send them to the House of Commons, and they either take them or they don't.
00:30:16.720And if they send them back not accepted, then I would expect that the Senate would very quickly then, you know, say, OK, we've done our job.
00:30:29.060It's going to be, you know, you got to be a little bit of an optimist.
00:30:34.500But I've seen I've seen most of these senators in action.
00:30:39.140And and, you know, we've got we've got about 15 new ones over the last few months that I don't know much about.
00:30:46.720I've met a number of them and I would count them to be, you know, to be thoughtful, responsible people that would that would kind of follow along in that in that path.
00:30:59.700So I would say hold your idea in reserve and let's see what happens.
00:31:07.300Well, OK, well, maybe now I'll ask you what you think of my idea.
00:31:12.760Let's set up a hypothetical, but not a wildly hypothetical here.
00:31:16.720I was talking, you know, with Senator Simons about, you know, when the House of Commons defeated the abortion, the replacement legislature around abortion in 1981.
00:31:26.840Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you about abortion itself.
00:31:29.220But that was a case where the Senate directly overrode and definitively overrode the will of the democratically elected and legitimate House of Commons.
00:31:43.400It occurs to me now that actually it's happened more than once.
00:31:46.940I'm not sure if it was outright defeated, but the free trade election of 1988, if my memory, if I'm getting this right, that was largely triggered because the liberal senators would not pass the free trade bill and said, well, you should have an election on this.
00:32:01.680And to Brian Mulroney's benefit, he won that election.
00:32:04.880but uh you know the senate has held up or outright defeated you know and they can be effectively the
00:32:12.420same thing uh at the end of the day they have they have done this before uh it's not too often
00:32:18.240but it has happened we discussed also you know there's a proposal among some of the leftist
00:32:23.800members of the senate around you know should they vote against anything with the notwithstanding
00:32:27.600clause particularly preemptive use of it again uh the notwithstanding clause is not unconstitutional
00:32:33.100You can argue if it's a good use of it or not, but it is quite explicitly constitutional.
00:32:39.720You know, so there's concern around that.
00:32:41.780And I can certainly foresee a situation where a Polyev-led conservative government could bring forward criminal justice legislation with certain mandatory minimum sentences, etc., that the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional, where you could see this.0.68
00:32:54.700So in a hypothetical situation, forget the actual content of it, but something along the lines of, say, free trade or notwithstanding clause, etc., if we have that and we ended up with logjam, you are the sole exception to the rule that they're appointed.
00:33:12.520uh but if we have that what would be your your you know how would you receive the idea of literally
00:33:20.720buying out the senate with uh with a severance package to essentially clear the place out
00:33:25.880maybe not 100 but you know most of it so that new appointees could be made
00:33:30.140uh that are more likely to pass government legislation well i think before you know before
00:33:36.860the government uh would get to something uh that far that far out and that expansive you know
00:33:45.480there's a few things that can be done there is there's a provision for a uh for a convention
00:33:51.160where representatives of both the senate and the house of commons meet try and iron it out
00:33:56.740that i don't think has ever been used but it's there in the constitution uh to be used in a case
00:34:03.420of a deadlock so you're right there have been uh rare occasions when uh when uh for varying reasons
00:34:12.460the senate has done this i think it's three times yeah but also the senate's never been
00:34:17.220unless i'm wrong the senate's probably never been this lopsided with appointments not just from a
00:34:21.960single party but a single band because because trudeau inherited all of those vacancies from
00:34:25.960harper it's not like he's been there for just nine years it's like it's closer to like he's
00:34:31.160been there for 15. So it's never been this lubsided. Yeah, you know, very similar to the
00:34:37.900early days of Harper, where, you know, there were a huge number of liberals, not, not like this,
00:34:47.000clearly not like this. I mean, the conservative caucus is down to, you know, 11 or 12.
00:34:56.040There are still, I would say, you know, eight or 10 other reliable conservative folks that, you know, actively and openly support conservative values.
00:35:12.040values. And then I would also say there are, you know, there's quite a number that genuinely
00:35:19.180believe in the independent thinking, but the deference to the will of the government in a
00:35:28.620popular mandate. So, you know, I have difficulty, I got to say, Derek, I have difficulty thinking
00:35:36.000that we would ever, with the people that are there, get into that situation. These are not
00:35:41.620hardcore partisan people for the most part. They are genuinely people who applied, went through
00:35:49.600that process. I think your characterization of most of them and their ideological leanings is
00:35:56.480true. Not everybody by any means, but it's a different group than a bunch of
00:36:06.420of uh partisan bag men and failed candidates there are some now there are some now he got
00:36:14.200added in the last year where i there has been a change uh a marked change where uh you know i
00:36:21.360would say there were five or six that you could say were clear partisan people but that's not
00:36:27.660that's not enough to move the needle yeah uh another way you're more of an expert on how
00:36:35.540the Senate's going to, the powers of the Senate than I am here. But another way I've considered
00:36:39.960on a potentially breaking logjam is, as far as the way I understand it, the Senate cannot defeat
00:36:44.940a money bill. That's correct. What if? By convention, I believe. Yeah. And it's a solid
00:36:51.300convention. Yeah, that's a pretty solid, some convention can be bent and people on both sides
00:36:56.580will do that as I was discussing with Senator Simons, but money bills can't be defeated.
00:37:00.100what if hypothetically uh a conservative government put like a one dollar spend in
00:37:07.280every single bill regardless of if you know you know it could be uh you know it's it's renaming
00:37:12.780uh some mountains somewhere you know there's some inconsequential bill but you put one dollar in it
00:37:17.820it becomes a money bill technically how how would that then affect i think that's more likely that
00:37:24.680That is absolutely more likely to be where we're going to run into some kind of a confrontation.
00:37:31.360Omnibus legislation that, and this has been a trick that has been done going back to the
00:37:37.320Mulroney years and every successive government has used it more and more where they do a
00:37:44.400budget and then they have in the budget document an annex that says, hey, we're going to do
00:37:49.000these things and then uh in addition and then they when they bring the the operative bill for
00:37:57.040the budget called the budget implementation act forward it's effectively this thing that's got
00:38:02.380the budget and all of those items in it and then it's got a whole raft of other things that have
00:38:08.020nothing to do with budget yeah and governments including uh the trudeau government was the worst
00:38:13.120offender of everybody in spite of what they said when they got elected that they were they would
00:38:17.720Well, what I'm proposing is perhaps the opposite of it. Not that I expect the new Conservative government to stop using omnibus legislation. It's something, unfortunately, all the parties do. But doing the opposite. You have a standalone bill, and it's naming something Sri Lankan Commemoration Week. I don't know. It could be whatever the bill is, but adding $1 to it.
00:38:40.440giving you the bill essentially giving the individual smaller pieces of non-omnibus
00:38:46.080legislation you put like one dollar into it um and then it goes to the senate could the senate
00:38:52.720then not defeat that bill if it's got you know a dollar attached to it well i don't think that's
00:38:56.780that's what's classified as a money bill money bill is around a budget uh or a fall economic
00:39:02.700statement those are the money bills that are talking we get bills all the time that have
00:39:06.500dollars attached to it uh you know health bills etc daycare bills all of those bills came came
00:39:14.120with um operative legislation and and but the the funding for that is is contained usually in a
00:39:23.500government bill i was sorry in a budget bill so if the funding for this was a part of the bill
00:39:28.500itself is what i'm saying like this would be a new this would be a new beast a new kind of
00:39:32.180legislative beast I don't I don't think that would pass muster with you know with the convention
00:39:39.720that's that exists but I think that where we we do I see a danger is in omnibus legislation where
00:39:47.780where everything gets thrown into as Donald Trump calls it one big beautiful bill and and
00:39:55.520And then we're kind of stuck with this, you know, things that may, you know, we may need to study.
00:40:06.720That's the one area, Derek, where I think that's the one area to watch.
00:40:10.820And much of that will depend on how the poly of government, if they take government, how they approach the Senate.
00:40:19.920There is a way they could provoke a fight, and that's one way to do it would be through some wicked omnibus bills that are just enormous and have everything in them.
00:40:33.960So we'll see. I hope everybody, I think that the majority of senators are approaching this kind of concept.
00:40:42.600I think they've accepted it. They've had six months of expecting that they're going to be in the position of dealing with conservative legislation.
00:40:52.120I think everybody's kind of come to the idea that we need to deal in good faith.
00:40:57.500And I would hope and expect that a poly of government, at least in the beginning, would give the Senate the opportunity to show its colors and build confidence and trust between the Senate and a new conservative government, if that's what people in Canada want.
00:41:15.800So before I let you go, I want to touch on kind of why you're a senator.
00:41:22.040As I said a few times, you're the only elected senator there.
00:41:26.680And Senator Simons, I thought, made a very good point that a triple E Senate might be desirable, but a double E Senate might be more dangerous for Western provinces like Alberta, where we have elected and effective, but not equal.
00:41:42.200where we have no, you know what, we're going to put a graphic up on the screen here showing
00:41:48.300the seat distribution in the Senate right now. Alberta has roughly, I think, twice the population
00:41:57.200of all four Atlantic provinces combined, yet we have just a hair over half the number of senators
00:42:03.560as just New Brunswick, just over half the number of senators as just Nova Scotia. We have only two
00:42:10.040more than Prince Edward Island, for God's sake. So, you know, every functioning federation in
00:42:16.760the democratic federation, the world has some kind of upper house, you know, in America, it's,
00:42:21.780they're all elected and have an equal number in Germany, they're appointed by the state lander
00:42:26.280governments. And it's, they're not equal in number, but it is relative somewhat to population. And
00:42:31.800it's a sliding scale to give more representation to the smaller states, there's different ways to
00:42:35.580do it canada is the only one on the planet where there's no democratic legitimacy of any kind
00:42:41.660with exceptions like yourself and where uh bigger provinces like alberta and bc can actually have
00:42:48.560significantly less representation in that upper house than smaller uh provinces like new brunswick
00:42:54.800nova scotia newfoundland um the the constitution appears to be set in stone for all time as long
00:43:03.420as Quebec is a part of Canada, as long as Quebec is in Canada, it does not appear to have any chance
00:43:08.480of being realistically opened. And, you know, Stephen Harper had referred his Senate reform
00:43:16.380proposals, which were more modest than earlier proposals, but some modest proposals to the
00:43:20.660Supreme Court. Supreme Court pretty much slapped him down. How do you think, you know, if say
00:43:29.200Pierre Polyev, or hypothetically Mark Carney, I doubt he'd have an appetite for it, but either
00:43:34.080one. How do you think Canada's next Prime Minister should approach potential Senate reform? Do you
00:43:41.340think it should continue on the path that Justin Trudeau's put it on? Or where do you think it
00:43:47.360should go? Well, I think your first point is absolutely correct. Trying to change fundamentally
00:43:54.780anything that's laid out in the Constitution with respect to the Senate is impossible.
00:43:59.880And the Supreme Court reference that Prime Minister Harper did, where he asked a series
00:44:04.800of questions and how much provincial approvals he would need in order to make X change, Y
00:44:13.280change, et cetera, and practically all of them of any impact would require unanimous
00:44:18.720consent, which we're never going to get.
00:44:20.440So I think what we have to do then is really, you know, think about, set that aside and think about how we can get the right senators in.
00:44:33.500I mean, I've kind of come to be able to rationalize the equality around the West, Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces.
00:44:47.020But the Constitution doesn't recognize these so-called regions. And even then, they're asymmetrical, like Newfoundland has a different number of senators than New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.
00:45:03.300I mean, it seems very arbitrarily designed, almost intentionally against the West.
00:45:07.920And that's not Justin Trudeau's fault or Stephen Harper's fault.
00:45:10.480That's arguably the founders of Confederation, who very much viewed the West as a colony at that time.